A giant rotating ski tunnel lined with real snow sounded pretty fantastical when plans for the project emerged last year. Now it is actually being built.
Snowtunnel has confirmed that construction is underway on its first full-scale facility in Braybrook, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The massive rotating cylinder has already been manufactured and delivered to the site, with crews now assembling the tunnel and its dedicated snow room.
The company plans to produce the first snow and begin rider testing later this year before opening the facility to the public in 2027.
An Endless Ski Slope Made With Real Snow
The concept is essentially a gigantic rotating ski slope.
The full-size Snowtunnel will stand approximately 41 feet high and stretch about 52 feet across. The interior surface of the cylinder will be covered with real snow and groomed so skiers and snowboarders can continuously ride as the tunnel rotates beneath them.
Instead of reaching the bottom and taking a chairlift back up, the slope effectively keeps coming.
Snowtunnel describes the patented system as an “endless mountain” with variable speed controls allowing the experience to be adjusted for beginners through advanced skiers and snowboarders.
The company says the riding surface provides more than 6,400 square feet of continuously skiable terrain.
Real snow will be made inside the refrigerated facility using equipment from Italian snowmaking manufacturer TechnoAlpin.
The Full-Size Tunnel Has Arrived
When plans for the Melbourne Snowtunnel emerged earlier this year, the project still had plenty to prove. Its exact location had not even been publicly confirmed.
That has changed considerably.
Snowtunnel’s current construction tracker lists site acquisition and planning approvals as complete. Manufacturing and delivery of the full-size tunnel are also complete, while construction of the tunnel and snow room is now underway.
The pilot facility is being built inside an existing roughly 12,900-square-foot building in Braybrook.
Recent reporting from Melbourne also confirms that major tunnel components have arrived and crews are actively assembling the structure.
Once construction is finished, the next steps are straightforward: make snow, spin the tunnel and put skiers and snowboarders on it.
First Skiers Expected to Test It This Year
The company says the Melbourne pilot tunnel is expected to begin operating for snow and rider testing before the end of 2026.
Australian alpine racer Sophie Mahon is among the athletes signed on as part of Snowtunnel’s test crew.
The public opening is currently targeted for 2027.
The Braybrook location is intended to serve as both a public attraction and a demonstration site for a much larger rollout. Snowtunnel is already pursuing future locations in other Australian cities and has announced an agreement to develop the technology in the United Kingdom.
The company argues that the rotating design allows indoor skiing to operate in a fraction of the space required for a traditional indoor ski slope.
It Still Looks Like a Giant Snow-Covered Hamster Wheel
There have been indoor ski areas for decades, but they typically rely on long refrigerated slopes that require enormous buildings.
Snowtunnel takes a very different approach.
Rather than making the building long enough to accommodate a ski run, the ski run itself continuously rotates beneath the rider.
It is a little difficult to look at the renderings without thinking of an enormous hamster wheel for skiers and snowboarders, but the technology has already progressed well beyond a rendering.
The developers previously built and tested smaller prototypes. Now the first full-size version is sitting inside a building in Melbourne and being assembled for snow testing.
If everything works as planned, skiers could be making endless real-snow turns inside it sometime next year.
